


To Burn Together

by alcego



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: High Fantasy AU, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Magic, Magical Beasts (and How to Fight Them), Minor Violence, No Beasts Were Harmed in the Making of this Fic, Past Miscommunication, Present Communication, Shiro (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Symbolism and Metaphors, Witches, Witches are Christmasey Right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 22:56:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13133943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcego/pseuds/alcego
Summary: “I need to know—” he hesitated. This was a stupid thing to ask a witch; he could ask her anything, could get answers to any of the questions that had followed him for all of his life. And yet, heneededto know.”I’m sorry.”The words were broken and wrong, a whisper forced through lips kissed red. “I shouldn’t have done that,” Shiro said, but those felt just as wrong as the first words he’d offered. “I’m sorry.”“Why was he sorry?”―――What you want isn't always what you need, and questions heavy on the tongue aren't always the mystery they seem to be. Keith risks the perils of a witch's cave in order to find answers. Instead he finds himself presented with a choice.My gift forcate-with-a-cin theShaladin Secret SantaExchange!





	To Burn Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cathwren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cathwren/gifts).



“If only our eyes saw souls instead of bodies, how different our ideals of beauty would be.”

― Lauren Jauregui

The cave was dark.

This wasn’t particularly strange, as caves tended to be dark. No, what was _odd_ were the torches standing tall in their sconces. They were coated in heavy oil, but they gave off no light.

Frowning, Keith pressed his fingers against the metal sconce by the cave’s entrance. It was still warm. He went in farther, testing the metal against his fingertips as he went. Even where the sun had no way of heating them, the sconces were warm.

“Everything okay in there?”

Keith held up his hand in response. Having someone outside as backup was an idle reassurance; the deeper into the cave Keith went, the less helpful Lance would be. That did nothing to stop the thief from being a general nuisance and poking his nose into things that didn’t concern him.

“You gotta say something, man,” Lance complained, but it fell flat. Keith never backed away from a fight. The fact that he was ignoring the challenge in Lance’s words spoke more than anything Keith would be able to say.

It wouldn’t do to bring in someone else, anyway. Their party was shorthanded as it was, and the likelihood of both of them coming out alive was slim. Allura had been dead set against Keith coming in on his own, but Shiro had spoken up for him. Told her that this was something Keith needed to do on his own.

Keith wasn’t sure what had tipped him off; perhaps he’d seen something in his eyes as he stared Allura down, refusing to relinquish his one chance at a straight answer.

_But he knew. Staring into Shiro’s eyes, sinking in deeper; there was something different about the shallow depth to his eyes, but Keith couldn’t place what it was. Couldn’t think right, not with Shiro’s lidded eyes peering into him, finding all of Keith’s frayed edges and holding them together with all he had._

_Because Shiro had always known how to approach him. Even as a stranger in a dank tavern, Shiro had known him in ways that Keith couldn’t begin to fathom._

_But those_ eyes. _Those eyes captivated him, drew him closer until Shiro’s breath warmed his face. Then Keith was lost somewhere else entirely, and his throat grew tight._

 _His soul rose to meet the mint riding on Shiro’s breath, and Keith was_ falling. _Keith thought that maybe, just this once, losing himself to someone else wasn’t so bad._

Keith bit his lip, forcing back the questions beating against the back of his head. He didn’t have time for those. _Pay attention._ He needed to keep on his toes.

He was in a witch’s layer, after all, and he had come uninvited.

Freezing wind blasted through the cave’s entrance, carrying Lance’s rosemary cologne with it in nauseating waves. Opening his mouth, Keith sucked in a breath of fresh air to steady the dizziness of his head. His cloak tugged against his shoulders, trying to follow the gusts into the cave’s depths. The thick threads that tied it across his shoulders grew tight, a noose around his neck where it was usually a grounding presence.

_Turn back, small one._

The words were little more than a whisper riding on the wind, but he heard them as crisply as if they had been tucked directly into his mind. They were nothing, and they were everything. With them came a chill unrelated to the frigid air raising goosebumps along his arms; he could _feel_ it in his bones.

This was the power of a witch.

He should have listened to Allura and stayed as far away from the cave as he could. There was malice in the air tonight.

A leaf brushed against his throat, and he froze. A fine dusting of debris covered the cave’s floor, whipping past his boots as it rode the wind deeper into the cave. There should have been nothing strange about a leaf sucked high into the wind. Except that it was going the wrong way, riding out of the cave on a warning in the wind.

Keith caught it in his hand. The leaf was a pale orange, veins a darker shade of the same color. It bore the tell-tale signs of a jagged cut tearing through its center, only to be sealed by the plant's natural ointment as it healed. _I like the scar. Gives me character._ A smile tugged at his lips, and he pocketed it.

The cave crackled to life. Gasping, Keith shielded his eyes from the torches' brilliant flames—they had all lit at the same time, with no one there to light them. Furious light spilled over the rock walls and cast jagged shadows across the floor.

Blinking tears from his watering eyes, Keith cursed the witch. If she thought she could scare him off that easily… he pressed further into the cave, until Lance’s nervous chittering faded into a distant memory. Now he was alone, without backup or any chance of rescue if something went wrong.

The cave’s tunnel branched into two, and Keith growled. Sure, caves were unpredictable and fickle things, but this was ridiculous. How far back had the witch hidden her lair? More importantly, _which tunnel_ did he need to follow in order to find them?

Something moved behind him.

Keith whipped around, hand tight on his sword’s hilt. He didn’t dare draw it here — not yet, anyway — but it seemed entirely too likely that Hunk’s Song of Protection was wearing off. Without that spell hardening his skin and sharpening his wits, things could get very nasty very, _very_ quickly.

A shadow darted across the floor. Leaves swept around it, carving an uncertain trail in the wake of the beast’s harried movement.

All the tales warned against drawing one’s weapon in a witch’s cave, and Keith had promised his friends that he would heed their advice. Watching the shadow grow to the size of a massive badger, he threw that promise of caution to the wind.

Keith drew his sword. The hiss of metal sliding past battered leather was music to his ears, a reminder of who he was. Of _what_ he was, and what he could do. Without the sword, Keith was stilted, incomplete. But with it in hand, he could do anything.

_Shiro leaned in slowly, strands of white hair brushing against Keith’s forehead. Tiny breaths ghosted across his face, and Keith froze_

_Shiro’s eyes were closed, his brow pulled in. Tense. Why was Shiro tense?_

_Then lips were pressed against his, and Keith’s eyes went wide. He stared at Shiro. Something about this felt wrong._

_Kissing Shiro was nothing like what he’d imagined._

_Gentle pressure. A simple warmth. It was perfect, and Keith melted into the kiss. His eyelids fluttered shut. There was so much warmth, but Keith was lost in the way their lips pressed together and how their breath mingled._

_He didn’t understand. Why was this perfect thing wrong?_

“Who’s there?” he asked.

The beast growled from its place in the shadows. Adopting a defensive stance, Keith stepped towards the beast. Intelligent eyes peered at him from the shadow’s edge. Something flickered at the edge of his vision. _The beast’s tail._

The torches stopped burning.

Eyes wide against the darkness, Keith lunged at the beast, bringing his sword down in an overhand blow. It didn’t connect. Metal struck stone and Keith stumbled towards the wall, his balance lost to the risky attack.

Staggering through the dark, Keith cursed his blindness. Sure fingers reached behind him, searching for stone in the darkness. There was nothing. Then cool rock sent chills through his glove, and Keith put his back to it.

Only three sides to defend now. That was better. His eyes were beginning to adjust; if the beast would only _move,_ then Keith would be able to find the stupid thing and strike it down.

Blotches of shadow bled into one another, shifting with the debris stirring in the wind. Nothing as significant as the beast; was it staying still? Or had magic given it the upper hand?

Dust spilled onto Keith’s shoulder. Spinning away from the wall, Keith held his sword high. It was climbing above him. _There._

Solid muscle crashed into him, and Keith’s face _slammed_ into the ground. He grunted, tried to roll over. Needed to force the beast off of him.

He reached for his sword, trusting that it had fallen somewhere that he could find it. _Just a little further._ Straining, Keith extended his hand. Eyes squeezed shut, he pushed a little harder, reached a little farther. He couldn’t grab it.

 _Keith was all go. He didn’t go slow, didn’t know how. But Shiro had always known what to say — known what to do — to bring Keith back to the present. How silly of him, to have forgotten Shiro could do things like_ this _without thinking about it at all._

_And then Shiro was pulling back, retreating from Keith’s desperate follow-through._

Keith gasped, trying to force his body to do what he wanted it to do, but it was useless. His lungs were screaming, protesting the weight crushing them into the ground and the lengths they were being pushed to.

He slammed his fist into the ground. This was useless! What good was this risk if Keith died before he even got to _see_ the witch?

Straining, Keith tried to pull himself out from under the beast. His fingers pulled at the stone, and his arms burned as they tried to keep up with his demands.

The beast grunted, apparently done watching its prey struggle beneath it. Colossal ebony claws sunk into the stone beside Keith’s head. But that couldn’t be right—

Didn’t matter. Maybe his head was making him see things wrong as it strained to gather more oxygen. It was irrelevant to his survival. _If its claws really_ are _that sharp…_

Store it away for later. He had to get out. Had to drag himself out from the beast’s impossible weight. _It can’t end like this._

This wasn’t how he was supposed to go, trapped beneath some beast’s claws, nails scraping against the ground that refused to give. No, fate had other plans in store for him. More important, _Keith_ had something he needed to know. And he _would_ find the answers.

Aching lungs protested his every breath as he summoned his strength. _Breathe in._ His lungs burned as fire gathered there. Heat leaked from his lungs and into his blood. It pooled there until it had nowhere to go without exploding.

This was a long shot, something that not even an idiot should do, but it was his only chance. It should be impossible; his flaming gut told him that such absolutes hadn’t been a part of his life for a long time.

His eyes snapped open and he _burned_. Flames licked his skin and chased away the darkness, scorching away the chill of winter and the frost clinging to the walls.

Screaming, the beast writhed away from him. Acrid smoke streamed off of its burning fur. Twisted cries of primal fear echoed through the hall as it hunkered in its own stench, flinching away from Keith as he climbed to his feet.

Sword in hand, Keith turned to face the unnatural thing. It was born of magic; something so twisted could never come from nature. Grimacing at the beast’s grotesque limbs, Keith advanced.

With his sword in hand, Keith felt _right_. Magic brought the impossible to life, but his sword brought them back to reality. Flames danced along his sword’s grip, playing with the leather and testing its limits.

Curiously, the fire didn’t burn him or his clothing. Closing eyes, Keith sucked in a breath. _Breathe. Control this._

But control had never been Keith’s strong suit.

_I think that is more than enough._

His flames died.

It was the witch, her words vibrating through his bones and staining his skin with their wrongness. They went deeper, sinking into his very essence and weighing heavily on the air.

For a moment, there was silence. Then the witch’s presence lit up the cave with power. Even without the torches lighting the correct passage to the witch’s lair, Keith would’ve been able to follow the pulsing waves with unerring accuracy.

Leaves followed the witch’s magic, flitting from torch to torch and dancing on the wind. As the tunnel went deeper into the cave the brighter the flames burned, offering a warmth to ease the biting chill and light to see by. Small animals shifted beneath layers of dirt and leaves that had fallen to the ground, and Keith eyed them warily as he continued walking. It felt like an eternal journey to the cave’s end, but the walk couldn’t have lasted more than twenty minutes.

The tunnel grew wider. It was such a subtle change that Keith wouldn’t have been able to point out where the change had begun, but it was there. More obvious were the leaves of creeping vines growing along the walls.

Vines grew in thick clumps farther down the hall, covering the wall and dangling from a high archway at the end of the tunnel. Soft yellow light reflected on their leaves, offering a gentle contrast to the harsh orange of the hall’s torchlight.

“Why are you here?” the witch asked. Something about her words demanded an answer. There was a quiet intensity shielded behind those words, shrouded in her breathy whisper.

“I need answers,” Keith said.

“Come, then.”

She sat in the middle of the opening, dress spilling over the mossy stone and enveloping her in a puddle of cloth. Her head was bowed, and her short black hair fell in curls around her cheeks. Beautiful wasn’t a word Keith had often heard associated with witches, but that seemed the only descriptor accurate for such a woman.

“What answers do you seek, child of lies?” she asked. Her voice, in stark contrast to her appearance, was rough and grating.

“I need to know—” he hesitated. This was a stupid thing to ask a witch; he could ask her anything, could get answers to any of the questions that had followed him for all of his life. And yet, he _needed_ to know.

_”I’m sorry.”_

_The words were broken and wrong, a whisper forced past lips kissed red. “I shouldn’t have done that,” Shiro said, but those felt just as wrong as the first words he’d offered. “I’m sorry.”_

“Why was he sorry?”

The witch snorted. “That is not what you’re here to ask,” she said, turning to face him. Keith’s breath froze as he took in the scar running through her right brow to her lip. Her right eye was missing; her left was glazed and unseeing.

Even without her sight, the witch seemed to be staring into him.

“No,” the witch said, nodding as if she’d been presented with an old memory and found it exactly as she’d expected. “You have another question that demands answers. Something that you have been hiding from even yourself, child of lies.”

“What does that mean?” This question — this gnawing terror that he’d done something irreparably _wrong_ — had tortured him for weeks. There was nothing else that he needed an answer for as urgently as this one. “I meant what I asked,” he insisted.

The witch smiled. “You already know the answer.” She cocked her head, unseeing eyes boring into his soul, _seeing_ in a way entirely impossible for eyes. “But there _is_ a question you must ask me.”

“What do I need to ask?”

Teeth poked through her crooked smile. “Look inside of yourself, and you will see.”

Keith closed his eyes and prayed for patience. She was talking in circles, refusing to give him answers. _Refusing?_ an amused part of him asked. It sounded suspiciously like Pidge’s voice when she laughed at Lance’s obstinate refusal to come down to reality and face the facts.

Even knowing that the witch’s eyes couldn’t _really_ see him, he felt them watching him. Judging him, betting against themselves whether or not he’d be able to find the question that hid the answers he needed most.

Why had Shiro apologized? _You already know the answer._

The tension in the lines of Shiro’s face. It had seemed so out of place, but there had to be a reason for it. _”I’m sorry.”_

The warmth of the kiss; the way that they had fit together. Shiro pulling away.

And Keith knew.

“He didn’t want to use me.” It was a simple answer to a complicated question. He could feel the witch looking at him, waiting for him to tell her more. _Block her out. Just think._

Why had Shiro been afraid of using him? Keith had been consenting and willing; he’d returned the kiss, hadn’t he? _Yes, but you didn’t say anything._ Allura was always reminding them that communication was the corner-stone of a successful relationship. Granted, she was referring to their party, but it seemed applicable to many walks of life.

“And I didn’t tell him…” Keith trailed off.

“What didn’t you tell him?” the witch prompted.

Tell him what? There was nothing to tell Shiro. Wasn’t the way he looked at him enough?

Keith started. For so long, emotions had been something to fear. They were complicated and messy and tended to leave people worse off than they had been before letting their emotions loose. He’d made a habit out of hiding his emotions— no. That was the wrong way to say it.

He’d made a habit of _denying_ his feelings. They were always there, staining his sleeves with their colors. It was rare that anyone learned to see through the muddy colors; it was rarer that someone was able to see them in their purest form from the beginning.

Keith wasn’t sure why he was surprised that Shiro wasn’t like the others. “That I feel differently about him.”

The witch’s hearty laughter boomed in the cave.

Keith turned back to her, realization chafing against him and begging for clarity. “What is it? This feeling? I don’t have a name for it.”

He was surprised by how close the witch was. Long fingers reached towards his chest, curled into a demanding gesture. Keith stood, lungs frozen in the face of magic. He didn’t understand it; didn’t need to.

Light bent around her digits, changing to something solid, something real. “I cannot give you the answer, child of lies,” she said softly, “for you have no truths to give.” The light solidified slowly into the form of a key. “But this,” she continued, “I can give you for free.”

As if in a dream, Keith’s hand rose to meet the witch’s, palm outstretched. She dropped the key there and smiled, yellow teeth catching in the flaming torchlight.

“This is your answer,” she said. “You will leave now.”

Keith closed his hand. A visible key to an invisible cage; something fantastic and frightening, daunting in its ability to bind one to another while retaining their individual worth.

There were many things he’d compared his emotions to, but never a key. He opened his hand and stared at the bronze key in his palm, still slightly warm from the magic light that had formed it, and felt something heavy become dislodged in his chest. But it didn’t sink, as he’d expected it to. Instead it _soared,_ and he reveled in the feeling.

Slowly, Keith pressed his fingers against the key. Its ridges pressed firmly against his calloused fingers. Its edges were rough. Predictable.

It felt right, somehow, that this convoluted feeling within him could be distilled into something so small. In practice, it was a twisted, misshapen thing, but its essence was simple.

 _Love._ That was what this was called. He didn’t know how he knew, except that the key seemed to fit that forbidden lock.

“I will not repeat myself.”

Cradling the key against his chest, Keith turned to leave. None of this felt real, and yet here he was. He’d made a deal with the witch, somehow, and was leaving with more than he’d come with. By all accounts, it shouldn’t be this way. What had she taken from him? Keith looked down at himself, taking stock of his clothing and health. Nothing was missing.

“What,” he stopped and closed his eyes. He shouldn’t ask her this. He should accept this gift — if that's even what it was — and go. “What do you want for this?”

Grappling with his will, Keith turned toward her. Somehow, the bemused smile she graced him with was more unsettling than everything that had led them to this point.

“You will find that those flames will not return to you. I need no payment beyond that.”

The witch turned her back to him, busying herself with the moss growing on the ground.

Still absorbing what had just happened, he made his way through the cave’s tunnels and towards the light of day, following the path that had led him here. Torches stared down at him from their sconces, eyes soaked in oil and knowing everything that had transpired. At the end of the tunnel, a single flame burned against the wind. There, he was met by the voice of a long-time thief.

“Sure took you long enough,” Lance said, neatly ignoring the fact that no one had really expected Keith to return in one piece. _Except for Shiro._ Lance pushed off of the tree he’d been leaning on and grabbed his spear. “What’d she give you?”

“A key,” Keith said simply. It wasn’t a lie, not exactly, but the half-truth fell flat between them.

Lance leveled him with a frustrated glare. “I thought we were done with the secrets, mullet.”

Instead of responding, Keith opened his fist, revealing the key sitting in his palm. “It’s only half a secret.” Feelings were treacherous things, and this one scared him.

Whatever peace Keith had found in the witch’s cave was gone now, as Lance took in the bronze key. It was small, simple, and warm in his palm. Warmer than it had any right to be.

 _Those flames will not return to you._ What had she meant by that?

“Looks like you got more questions than answers, then,” Lance said, smile crooked but kind.

In a way, Lance was right. Keith had no idea what to do with the key or the revelations that came with it. At the same time, Lance was wrong; Keith was staring a choice in the eye, now.

“We should get back to the others,” Keith said. He’d gone into the cave to find answers, and he’d found them. There was nothing to say. Not to Lance, anyway.

Lance matched his stride easily, resting his spear on his shoulder. He had a way of adjusting himself to those around him without losing anything of himself. Could Lance’s easy adaptation to everything the world threw at him be a product of his thieving history, or had he always been this way?

“Keep thinking so hard and your head’s gonna explode,” Lance said lightly. It sounded like a joke, but they’d been traveling together for long enough that Keith could recognize concern in the subtext.

They made their way through the underbrush, following the path they’d cut on their way in. Keith trained his eyes on the branches ahead. He couldn’t stop thinking.

 _I have no answers to give you, for you have no truths to give._ The words sat strangely with him. He was sure he knew enough to feed the witch’s thirst for months, but her voice had brooked no argument.

What did she mean by truths? Wasn’t a lie just a distorted truth? He was a terrible liar, there was no denying that, but he’d lived long enough to know that lies weren’t always clear-cut or concrete. They were obstructions of truth, crucial details discarded into the dirt for traveling feet to push them in deeper, hiding them away from prying eyes.

Perhaps Keith wasn’t in the habit of lying, but he wasn’t as honest as he could be.

The key sat heavily in his palm, pulling his attention back to it. This was the manifestation of _something_ within him. Not love, as he’d thought before. What was it, then?

Keith closed his eyes and breathed. He was being drawn inwards, reflecting on things that he had no power to change. _Those flames will not return to you._

Keith’s eyes snapped open. The magic he’d tapped into was gone. Nothing was burning in the pit of his stomach, waiting for him to call on it and breathe life into its sparks. The witch had taken his magic!

He looked at the key. No, that wasn’t right: she had changed the magic’s form. Now it sat dormant in this key, useless without a lock to open. It wasn’t the embodiment of his feelings for Shiro, as he’d thought.

 _Shiro._ It had been months since Shiro had returned from his gig guarding a merchant’s caravan, but he hadn’t been the same since then. The metal arm and flop of white hair were superficial reminders that Shiro’s journey had not been a kind one.

Even more striking was how reserved he’d become; he’d always been distant, but the things he’d seen had put a fire in his eyes and nowhere for the smoke to go. At times, Keith thought that the harsh gray of his eyes was nothing more than a smokescreen hiding his soul from the world.

They certainly hid it from Keith.

Stepping through the thickest part of the underbrush meant that Keith had to pay attention to Lance’s idle chatter as well as where they stepped. Cursed vines had already grown thickly between the trees, forcing Keith to unsheathe his hunting knife to cut them back.

Lance did the same with a knife he kept strapped to his spear, and together they made quick work of the creeping plants.

“They’re back!”

Lance’s face lit up, and he took off through the small passage that they’d opened with their knives. “Pidgey!”

They acted as if they hadn’t seen each other in weeks instead of hours. Scowling, Keith ran the flat edge of his knife over his pants, wiping the plant material off of it before re-sheathing it. Stepping out of the woods, Keith found the cart parked where it had been hours before. Somehow he hadn’t expected that.

“How’d it go?” a soft voice asked a few yards from the treeline. Shiro.

Keith sucked in a lungful of air and turned to face him. “Can we talk?”

Shiro looked surprised, but he didn’t question Keith’s request. Instead, he smiled and said, “You know I’m always here to talk to you.”

Kind words and a kinder face. Shiro would never do anything to hurt him, so why was Keith so afraid? He forced himself to look Shiro in the eye, just above the raised edge of the angry scar that had nearly taken his eyes.

Those eyes held the sky and the stars, and Keith could fall into them for the rest of his life. Now they were shrouded in smoke from the fire of Shiro’s pain, but the sky was still there. He just had to look a little closer to see it.

How had he forgotten about falling into Shiro’s eyes?

“About that night… a few months ago.”

Something complicated made its way across Shiro’s face, pulling down the edges of his lips and wrinkling his brow. “Keith,” Shiro said carefully, rubbing the back of his neck with his human arm. “I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you like that—”

“’Taken advantage of me’? Shiro, _no_. That’s not- that’s not what I want to talk about.” There was no running away from this now — he didn’t think he’d know _how_ to run away from something like this. “Shiro, you don’t— there’s nothing for you to apologize for.”

Shiro started to object, but Keith made his eyes steel, stared down the protest on his lips. He meant what he’d said, and he wouldn’t argue about it.

“There’s nothing for you to apologize for,” he repeated, “because I wanted it too. I was… confused about why you’d stopped. I didn’t even know why you were apologizing until today— but that’s beside the point. Shiro, I talked to the witch.”

Shiro said nothing, but he kept his eyes on Keith’s, searching for the truth in his eyes, in the lines of his face and the tilt of his lips.

“She didn’t say much to me,” Keith admitted, “but she showed me the truth of what I’ve been avoiding. I have feelings for you, Shiro. I don’t know what to do with them, but they’re there. And I’m sorry for not telling you before—”

“Keith,” Shiro said, placing a hand on his shoulder, stopping him before he could tear himself apart with no way of putting himself back together. They said a million words in the silence between them, but none of it was enough.

“I’m glad you told me,” Shiro said, voice nearly a whisper. “I’m glad that… what I did that day wasn’t a mistake.” Shiro laughed, eyes crinkling with the smile on his lips. “Running away was wrong, but I’m glad I kissed you.”

“I’m glad you did, too.” Shiro’s smile was infectious, and Keith would do anything to keep it there for even a second longer.

Shiro’s hands found their way to Keith’s neck, fingers sliding into his hair and resting there. Stepping towards him, Keith touched Shiro’s shoulder. Closing the distance felt right, as did the weight of their foreheads pressing together, and so did threading his fingers through the heavy folds of Shiro’s cloak.

They’d always been tactile, and hands-on shoulders were familiar. Here they bridged another line, pressing together in a new way. It was hands on shoulders evolved into foreheads resting against each other, arms wrapped around necks, hands in hair. It was familiar and foreign at the same time; it was everything they had ever been doubled and squared, built around their hard-earned trust and stubborn affections.

Kissing Shiro was nothing like Keith had imagined. It was _better_.

It was fire at the nape of their necks, growing with the relief and the passion of feelings reciprocated. It was knowing that no matter where he went or what he did, Shiro would be there to hold him. It was Shiro’s smile as he said that he didn’t regret their kiss.

Their lips met, and Keith _burned_.

Eyes closed, souls mingling, Keith melted into Shiro’s embrace. This was perfect; it was everything he’d dreamed of and then some. Shiro loved him, and he loved Shiro. They weren’t ready to say it so succinctly yet, but there was the promise of forever in Shiro’s eyes as they parted to greet their companion’s whistles and cheers.

Part of him screamed that no one who promised forever stayed, but Keith had seen it in Shiro’s eyes. For better or for worse, he believed what he’d seen there, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Because Shiro was here, and his eyes were earnest, his face honest. If Shiro’s eyes said forever, then Keith would believe them. Because Shiro held the stars and the sky in his eyes, and those had never lied to him before.

Even without the magic in his stomach, Keith was warm when he fell asleep that night with Shiro by his side. One day he’d figure out what to do with that key, but for now, he was content with sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a ton of fun to write, and I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you think in the comments, or support me on [Tumblr!](https://alcego.tumblr.com) :D


End file.
